CONCEPTIONS OF THE DEITIES

The Greeks made their gods and goddesses after themselves.
The Olympian divinities are really magnified men and women, subject to all
human passions and appetites, but possessed of more than human power and
endowed with immortality. They enjoy the banquet, where they feast on nectar
and ambrosia; they take part in the struggles of the battle field; they marry
and are given in marriage. The gods, morally, were no better than their
worshipers. They might be represented as deceitful, dissolute, and cruel, but
they could also be regarded as upholders of truth and virtue. Even Homer could
say, "Verily the blessed gods love not evil deeds, but they reverence
justice and the righteous acts of men." [12]

[12] Odyssey, xiv, 83-84.

IDEAS OF THE OTHER WORLD

Greek ideas of the other world were dismal to an extreme.
The after-life in Hades was believed to be a shadowy, joyless copy of the
earthly existence. In Hades the shade of great Achilles exclaims sorrowfully,
"Nay, speak not comfortably to me of death. Rather would I live on earth
as the hireling of another, even with a landless man who had no great
livelihood, than bear sway among all the dead." [13] It was not until
several centuries after Homer that happier notions of the future life were
taught, or at least suggested, in the Eleusinian mysteries.